Issuu

T The he Pr Professional ofessional “Ho “How-To” w-To” gazine on Ma Magazine tooning Comics, Car Cartooning tion and Anima Animation

#33

Spring 2017 $8.95 IN THE US

BILL SIENKIEWICZ THE LEGENDARY LEGENDARY CCOMICS OMICS AR ARTIST TIST AND ILLUSTRATOR ILLUSTRAATOR REVEAL REVEALSS HIS PR PROCESS OCESS

JEFFREY WA ATTS WATTS

AND THE W WATTS WAATTS ATELLIER ATELLIER TELL ARTS OF THE AR TS PL PLUS! US! REGUL REGULAR AR C COLUMNISTS OLUMNISTS

AND MIKE MANLEY :G= ;K>M ;E>OBGL :G= ;K>M ;E>OBGL

82658 00065

Batman, Joker TM & © DC Comics.

JERR JERRYY ORD ORDWAY WAY JJAMAR AMAR NICHOL NICHOLAS AS

DRAW! (edited by MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue features in-depth INTERVIEWS and DEMOS from top pros on all aspects of graphic storytelling, as well as such skills as layout, penciling, inking, lettering, coloring, Photoshop techniques, plus web guides, tips, tricks, and a handy reference source—this magazine has it all! NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for figure drawing instruction. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

Other issues available, & an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all issues at HALF-PRICE!

DRAW! #24

DRAW! #25

DIEDGITIIOTANSL BLE

AVAILA

DRAW! #21

DRAW! #22

DRAW! #23

Urban Barbarian DAN PANOSIAN talks shop about his gritty, design-inspired work with editor MIKE MANLEY, DANNY FINGEROTH interviews “Billy Dogma” writer/artist DEAN HASPIEL, plus more of MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, product and art supply reviews by JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

Interview with inker SCOTT WILLIAMS from his days at Marvel and Image to his work with JIM LEE, and PATRICK OLIFFE demos how he produces Spider-Girl, Mighty Samson, and digital comics. Also, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

PATRICK OLIFFE interview and demo, career of AL WILLIAMSON examined by ANGELO TORRES, BRET BLEVINS, MARK SCHULTZ, TOM YEATES, ALEX ROSS, RICK VEITCH, and others, MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS’ “Comic Art Bootcamp”, a “Rough Critique” of a newcomer’s work by BOB McLEOD, art supply reviews by “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS, and more!

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital edition) $3.95

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #26

DRAW! #27

DRAW! #28

GLEN ORBIK demos how he creates his painted noir paperback and comic covers, ROBERT VALLEY discusses animating “The Beatles: Rock Band” music video and Tron: Uprising, plus Comic Art Bootcamp on “Dramatic Lighting” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, BOB McCLOUD gives a Rough Critique of a newcomer’s work, and more!

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software!

JOE JUSKO shows how he creates his amazing fantasy art, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews artist JIMM RUGG (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, One Model Nation, and The Guild), new regular contributor JERRY ORDWAY on his behind-the-scenes working process, Comic Art Bootcamp with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, reviews of artist materials, and more!

Top comics cover artist DAVE JOHNSON demos his creative process, STEPHEN SILVER shows how he designs characters for top animated series, plus new columnist JERRY ORDWAY presents “The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the ORDWAY!”, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, and hit “Comic Art Bootcamp” with Draw editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS!

FAREL DALRYMPLE shows how he produces Meathaus and Pop Gun War, director and storyboard/comics artist DAVE BULLOCK dissects his own work, columnist JERRY ORDWAY draws on his years of experience to show readers the Ord-way of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

(84-page magazine with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. DRAW! #29

DRAW! #30

DRAW! #31

DRAW! #32

DAVE DORMAN demonstrates his painting techniques for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book cover, LeSEAN THOMAS (character designer and co-director of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite: The Animated Series) gives advice on today’s animation industry, new columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

We focus the radar on Daredevil artist CHRIS SAMNEE (Agents of Atlas, Batman, Avengers, Captain America) with a how-to interview, comics veteran JACKSON GUICE (Captain America, Superman, Ruse, Thor) talks about his creative process and his new series Winter World, columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

How-to demos & interviews with Philadelphia artists JG JONES (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and KHOI PHAM (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing SpiderMan, The Mighty World of Marvel), JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews of art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY demos the “ORD-way” or drawing, and Comic Art Bootcamp by MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! JG Jones cover! Mature readers only.

Super-star DC penciler HOWARD PORTER demos his creative process, and JAMAL IGLE discusses everything from storyboarding to penciling as he gives a breakdown of his working methods. Plus there’s Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviewing art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY showing the Ord-Way of doing comics, and Comic Art Bootcamp lessons with BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA 919-449-0344 E-mail:

store@twomorrows.com

Order at twomorrows.com

THE PROFESSIONAL “HOW-TO” MAGAZINE ON COMICS & ILLUSTRATION WWW.DRAW-MAGAZINE.BLOGSPOT.COM SPRING 2017, VOL. 1, #33 Editor-in-Chief • Michael Manley Managing Editor and Designer • Eric Nolen-Weathington Publisher • John Morrow Logo Design • John Costanza Front Cover • Bill Sienkiewicz DRAW! Spring 2017, Vol. 1, No. 33 was produced by Action Planet, Inc. and published by TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Manley, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial address: DRAW! Magazine, c/o Michael Manley, 430 Spruce Ave., Upper Darby, PA 19082. Subscription Address: TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Dr., Raleigh, NC 27614. DRAW! and its logo are trademarks of Action Planet, Inc. All contributions herein are copyright 2017 by their respective contributors. Views expressed here by contributors and interviewees are not necessarily those of Action Planet, Inc., TwoMorrows Publishing, or its editors. Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing accept no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. All artwork herein is copyright the year of production, its creator (if work-for-hire, the entity which contracted said artwork); the characters featured in said artwork are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners; and said artwork or other trademarked material is printed in these pages with the consent of the copyright holder and/or for journalistic, educational, or historical purposes with no infringement intended or implied. This entire issue is ©2017 Action Planet, Inc. and TwoMorrows Publishing and may not be reprinted or retransmitted without written permission of the copyright holders. ISSN 1932-6882. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BILL SIENKIEWICZ

Mike Manley talks with the legendary artist about his anything-goes approach to comics and illustration

RIGHT WAY, WRONG WAY—ORDWAY!

JEFFREY WATTS

COMIC ART BOOTCAMP

THE CRUSTY CRITIC

Jerry discusses story continuity from start to finish

Class is in session! Mike talks with the artist behind the Jeff Watts Atelier

This month’s installment: The importance of learning by physically doing

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

Jamar Nicholas reviews the tools of the trade. This month: Pocket-sized sketchbooks

www.twomorrows.com

DRAW! SPRING 2017

-ING AHEAD

ello to you again, loyal Draw! reader—or maybe you are a new reader and this is your first issue. In either case, welcome aboard! I’m very proud of this issue and have admired and wanted to interview both Bill and Jeff for a long time. The industries of comics, illustration, and animation are in constant flux. Heavy churning tosses all artists these days. Technology and globalization effect the artist at every level today, from the student to the seasoned pro, and both men stand out for their ability to remain at the top, but also for constantly training to stay at the top of their game. I was thinking as I type this from my studio here in the gray and cold Philly winter, how both artists I interviewed for this issue live in sunny California—and how I’m very jealous of them this time of the year. I have admired Sienkiewicz’s work for a long time, and we even got to work together Drawing by Bret Blevins once in the beginning of my career on an issue of Marvel Fanfare on a Moon Knight story—issue #34 to be exact. You can see examples of that on my Drawman blog: www.drawman.blogspot.com. I’ve long admired Jeffrey Watts’ work and his school and passion for teaching, and his fine art career as well. In fact, when I was considering going back to school in the mid-’90s, Jeff’s school was one that I seriously considered attending, and on cold winter days like today I still wish that maybe I had. With the high costs of art schools today, tuitions rising to unaffordable levels for many, Jeffrey’s atelier offers not only a great source of learning, but one that won’t break the bank. Big thanks to my regular contributors, the iron men of comics, sans the armor: Bret, Jamar, and Jerry, as well and my solver of all things and the one who makes this mag look great, Eric. So get out there and draw something; its good salve for these troubling times, but also good for your wallet!

Best,

GET THE BEST OF

BEST OF DRAW! VOLUMES 1 & 3 Vol. 1 compiles tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations from DRAW! #1-2, by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (figure drawing), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Cover by BRET BLEVINS!

Vol. 3 compiles more of the best tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #5-7, including: Penciling by MIKE WIERINGO! Illustration by DAN BRERETON! Design by PAUL RIVOCHE! Drawing Hands, Lighting the Figure, and Sketching by BRET BLEVINS! Cartooning by BILL WRAY! Inking by MIKE MANLEY! Comics & Animation by STEPHEN DeSTEFANO! Digital Illustration by CELIA CALLE and ALBERTO RUIZ! Caricature by ZACH TRENHOLM, and much more! Cover by DAN BRERETON!

(200-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905412 Diamond Order Code: AUG078141

(256-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905917 Diamond Order Code: JAN083936

TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

DRAW! SPRING 2017

Phone: 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Web: www.twomorrows.com

BILL SIENKIEWICZ

Interview conducted by Mike Manley and transcribed by Steven Tice

Comic Book Illustrator

DRAW!: So how goes it today? What are you working on today in your studio? BILL SIENKIEWICZ: I’m working on some inks over my friend, Ian Dorian. I promised I would work on the series he’s doing. He’s a really terrific guy and a great friend of mine, and I’ve worked with him in the past, so I’m enjoying this. I’ve got other projects I’m working on that are taking up a lot of time, so this is one I’m sort of doing as I can take the time to do it. DRAW!: What’s the series? BILL: It’s called Law of Resistance. It hasn’t come out yet. Jim Krueger is writing it. It’s an independent, not for one of the big companies. I’m not really sure how it’s all going to come together. I’m sort of the hired set of hands in terms of finishes, and unless it concerns me directly, at certain times I don’t really pay attention to all that. With the project I’m doing with Kelly Sue [DeConnick], we know it’s Image. And then I’m doing a bunch of covers and stuff for DC and Marvel, so I’m spinning a number of different plates. DRAW!: Are you working on his originals? Are you doing blueline? Are you doing it digitally? BILL: I’ve got his originals, so I’m working on those. And I’ll be doing some stuff over Denys Cowan again soon. Mostly when I’m inking I prefer working over actual pencils. Just as we’re talking, I’m realizing, oh my God, I’m doing a lot of different gigs. I’m working with Kevin Eastman on four pages a month of Turtles, and those I’m doing over blue-

lines. What I’m doing there is printing out his bluelines, and I’m inking them very, very large. DRAW!: Larger than 11" x 17"? BILL: Oh, yeah. Actually, the first ones, it would get up to around 18" x 24", because it allows for so much play with the line, so I can actually take a really thick pen—I usually use a chisel point more recently. DRAW!: You mean like a Speedball lettering pen? BILL: It’s called a Pilot Parallel Pen [a calligraphy pen]. It’s 6 mm wide, and when you turn it on it’s edge it’s a hairline. It’s like ice skating on paper with ink—that’s the way it feels. With Ian, I’m actually jumping from regular inking nib points and whatnot. It’s interesting working over different people. When I’m working over Denys, I have a certain approach, and when I’m working over Kevin, I’ve got a whole other approach and things I’m trying to pull out of what he’s doing, and then inking over Ian, because Ian’s more of a sculptor— that’s primarily what he’s known for—his work has kind of a sculptural quality. I find that when I’m inking Denys, I’m inking a little bit more in terms of graphic shapes and patterns, which actually fits a little bit more with my own approach, my own sensibility. But with Ian, I’m actually getting into doing the anatomy. So it’s kind of an interesting array of styles that I’m working with. DRAW!: Denys has a sort of Sergio Toppi influence with the textures. I usually use the 108 when I ink Bret Blevins or

DRAW! SPRING 2017

Page 23 of Moon Knight #12 (left) inked with a Hunt #102 pen nib, and page 11 of New Mutants #29 (right) inked with a Gillott 1950. Moon Knight, New Mutants © Marvel Characters, Inc.

somebody like that, but with Denys a stiffer pen seemed to fit that feeling. BILL: Right. DRAW!: What are some of your favorite pen nibs? Do you use the old 102 standard? BILL: I use everything. I have a whole slew of pen nibs that I try. I mean, a lot of times I’ll take marker pens, the ones with the fiber tips, and I’ll open them up, even if they say they’re pigmented, and flush out the ink and fill them with India ink so they’re permanent and don’t wash away. So I’ll get into some periods with those, and I find that at a certain point I kind of max out on the feeling of the fiber point, and I want something that’s crisper, so I’ll go and I’ll work with a Gillott 1950. When I was working on New Mutants, I was working with that. I found that it was really good for crisp and angled lines, and it had a certain level of flexibility. But I use the 102, 107, 1950, 290, and 291. And then I’ve been using these Esterbrooks, as well. DRAW!: I have a bunch of those that I bought off of eBay years ago. I had a whole box, and they’re like nails. The metal on those is really heavy-duty.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

BILL: On some of them, yeah. I actually have the ones, it’s like 375 or something. I forget what the number is, but they’re pretty flexible. They’re a little bit more like the 290s. But I bend the very, very tip up so that it’s got a little bit of an angle to it, and it allows me to get thinner and thicker lines. I also use these Sailor pens from Japan, as well. So I’ve jumped from all different kinds of pens and brushes. Even working on one panel I’ll jump from one pen tool to another, because I want a thicker line for, say, the strokes in a woman’s black hair. If I’m doing a small figure in the background, I might use a 102 or a 659 Gillott—one of the thin ones. I think the 659 is pretty similar to the 102 except it’s a little bit more flexible. But the 102, to me, is the standard. It’s the one I probably have used the most over the years. Between that and the 1950. I think the 102 is what I used mostly on Moon Knight, and the 1950 was what I used most on New Mutants. My favorite tool right now is whatever I have in my hand, because I’m still always looking for the perfect tool. DRAW!: [laughs] That’s one of the things I always found fun about inking other people’s stuff rather than inking my own stuff is that you would maybe use tools or approaches you wouldn’t necessarily use on your own work.

BILL: Mm-hmm! DRAW!: You also do a lot of digital stuff. When you’re working on your Cintiq or whatever, did you create a bunch of pens or brushes to give you a variety…? BILL: No, actually, I had a Cintiq for about a day and then I returned it. I love what people can do with Cintiqs, but I’m such an inveterate tinkerer that I need to get my hands dirty, and I need to feel that whatever line I make is put down on a surface that’s real. I very seldom do any drawing on my Intuos or my iPad. Most of what I use digital for is for putting big pieces together. I use a really good, slick animation bond, and I can rework a panel five different times—there’s no one true original. I’ll pick different parts of different panels I’m working on, and some of them will come together and they’re completely finished. In others, it’s like, I like the hand in that one, and I like the hair in that one, or the feet in that one, or the way that the line squiggled there. I try to get it all in as much as I can, because otherwise I’m scanning in 30 sheets for one panel. So I try to minimize that. DRAW!: That’s the way guys like Austin Briggs used to work. They would do an underdrawing, and then they would put a sheet of acetate over top of that. Sickles supposedly did that, too. He would kind of rehearse a drawing, and then do the final… BILL: Right. Certain drawings in my sketchbook will have a certain freedom, and I find that a lot of artists, their work will really tighten up in good ways and bad. By tightening up, they would get crisper and more refined, but also by tightening up it’s a little bit more anal, and I think it can lose some of the life. You mentioned Toppi early on. Even his sketchier stuff is still nailed. The same with, when you get to a certain level, Toth. I think Neal Adams, his storyboards and stuff that he does when he’s sort of “not locking things in” is really spectacular, and I’d love to see him do a comics job like that. There are aspects of Jordi Bernet and Toth in those looser sketches, but when he goes in, for some reason he feels he has to render everything up, and I sort of feel like he’s missing out on an interesting arrow in his quiver there. I find in my own work, that the rendering is not as interesting to me now. It’s only interesting to me if I’m creating a pattern. But the idea of turning a form and all of that other stuff that comics and superheroes, especially, are so predicated on, I mean, I understand anatomy well enough to know how to render a form, but at the same time there’s a part of me that just doesn’t want to do that. I’ve done it. I want to say more with less.

DRAW!: Neal was my god when I was younger, but your work went through that process where you nailed it, then you went from rendering more to design and pattern. BILL: Yeah, that stuff interests me more than ever. It’s what keeps it fun for me. There’s nothing wrong with the other stuff in terms of doing it, and I feel like it’s important. I mean, I had a panel with Neal and we talked about that certain Zen aspect. I remember when I was studying anatomy and going to art school, and even on my own, I knew where all the muscles were, I knew what they were all named, I knew how they inserted and where they attached to the bones and stuff. And now I can’t remember half the names. DRAW!: You know where it is, but…. The people I know who know all that stuff are the guys that teach anatomy all the time, because they’re constantly saying that this hooks into there. But also it seems to be fairly common that you’re more obsessed with that when you’re younger, and most guys tend to work towards being a little looser the longer that they work. Because rendering, like you said, it’s fun, and there’s sort of a

Sketch © Bill Sienkiewicz

DRAW! SPRING 2017

Zen aspect to it, but it can also be monotonous, too, because it becomes formulaic. BILL: Oh, yeah. To me the whole concept of inking and finishing is a misnomer anyway. To me it’s all drawing. DRAW!: Right. Because the best inkers of the old days were full-fledged artists. They were just maybe not as dynamic with layout or, like, Frank Giacoia was very good, but he was supposedly too slow to do monthly stuff. But the guy was a great inker on somebody like Kirby or Buscema. BILL: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That’s totally the case. But what happens is you get into a whole thing of rendering a nose, and getting the highlight of that nose, and after a certain point it’s like, “Okay, I’ve rendered highlights on noses 15,000 times. Maybe I’ve played that to death.” You can find these little tricks, and at a certain point it’s almost like, “Nah, I’m tired of the tricks.” DRAW!: I’m doing the two strips, The Phantom and Judge Parker, and I feel like when I’m doing that, it’s almost like being an actor. I’m playing a role. The Phantom I think of as sort of a brush style because it’s from the ’30s. It’s been around 80 years now, and the readers expect there to be a

continuity. If I went in and completely changed it up, like he had veins on his costume and stuff, the people who have been reading it would go, “What is that? This is not what I want.” So I feel like there’s a role that I am playing that I wouldn’t necessarily do on something else. BILL: Oh, yeah, yeah. That I totally understand. When I inked Sal Buscema on Spider-Man, when they first approached me to do it, they asked if I could ink it like Scott Williams. And this is after I’d not been doing as much comics stuff. I was doing more illustration/advertising stuff. So when they asked me if I wanted to do it, I was like, “Look, you’ve got the wrong guy for that. I’ll do it, but I’m going to see what Sal’s work says to me.” So I ended up inking it very, very bold and brushy. And Sal loved it. When I saw him—we hadn’t really met before. I had seen John [Buscema] a lot at the offices. When I met Sal, we were at this show together, he came up and he gave me a big hug. It was actually some of the most fun I’ve ever had. DRAW!: I inked him once on an issue of Spider-Man, and it was so much fun, partially because, whenever I’ve inked guys like him or Gil Kane, I felt like, “I’m really working in comics now. I’m inking Gil Kane.” [laughs] I thought it was interesting when you inked John Buscema on Wolverine, and then you guys did something else together after that, too. BILL: Yeah, I did a Galactus thing with him. But the Wolverine job, man, I remember how much fun I had on that. That’s still one of my favorite—I wish I had some pages from that, because I didn’t save anything. But, yeah, “The Gehenna Stone Affair,” I think it was called. I really loved it. I loved working over him, because he would put down very few lines, but whatever lines were there were just perfect. DRAW!: I know. It looks amazingly simple, but you realize how much knowledge—it’s like the Nine Old Men from Disney know exactly where to put that line, how to indicate all that form and volume with, like, four lines on a leg. BILL: Oh, it’s so true, so true. And I think a lot of guys get trapped into sort of repeating that rendering. The tendency to simplify seems ingrained, at least it is in most of the guys that I really admire. A lot of the flashy sort of rendering and everything else, at a certain point it feels like it becomes very surface, and I find the stuff that really gets me going is the stuff that’s underneath, the design. I mean, it’s great to have a great surface on something, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the step that drives me as crazy as some of the other stuff.

Detail of Bill inking John Buscema from Wolverine #10. Wolverine © Marvel Characters, Inc.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

DRAW!: Having followed your career, it was obvious in the beginning that you turned a corner. You were also starting to do illustration, so you were bringing your other influences to what you were doing. Were you getting any resistance at the time from that at all, or were people like, “Yeah, this is cool!” BILL: Well, the editors were cool with that, but Shooter used to bust my chops a lot. Jim and I got along great, but it wasn’t comics-centric in terms of the influence I was pulling from, so he would regularly bust my chops. Especially when I was

Bill’s inks (right) over John Buscema’s pencils (left) for Galactus: The Devourer #5, page 1. Galactus, Silver Surfer © Marvel Characters, Inc.

doing a lot of the painted stuff. He’d say there’s a lot of artsyfartsy stuff, because the coloring I was trying to go for was more painterly colors and a little bit less full-on spectrum. The Hulk’s green might be more of a grayish, sick green as opposed to lime green. DRAW!: What do they say, “The grays are the soup of painting”? They hold painting together. Really great artists, their grays aren’t gray. They’re full of all kinds of great color. BILL: Oh, yeah, they absolutely are. And, again, that whole thing about what defines good colors, everything has to be taken in context, so it’s what it’s next to. DRAW!: When you were living in New York, were you studying at the Art Students League? Were you taking classes? BILL: Yeah, I was taking some classes. I was taking more classes in Connecticut. I’d take some watercolor classes or painting classes with my friend Joe Chiodo when we both lived in Connecticut. But when I lived in New York, a lot of that was really going to museums, and doing life drawing—a lot of life drawing, a lot of painting. I mean, I would go to

museums and study, but most of what I was learning was kind of self-taught. I did go to art school, but at a certain point, all art is— DRAW!: Where did you go? BILL: I went to school in Newark, the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts. It was a four-story brownstone in Newark not too far from Rutgers’ campus. The art school was on the top floor, and then the rest of the building was a music and dance school. There was a lot of jazz, and amazing singers were there, dancers. Savion Glover was there. Melba Moore used to go there. So some of the teachers I had were not only painters, but were jazz guys. They played at Carnegie Hall and stuff like that, so I learned about jazz at the same time. We’d have our all-day painting class on Fridays, and we’d get some bottles of Old English 800—because, when you’re in Newark, you’re drinking Old English and smoking Kool cigarettes. I think they handed those to you when you got to the city limits. [Mike laughs] And then we would just paint and listen to music. Either we were listening to records or listening to what was coming up from the floors below.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

THE RIGHT WAY, THE WRONG WAY, AND THE

ORDWAY ! CONTINUITY by JERRY ORDWAY

Caricature by Rachel Ordway

’

ve been thinking about what to demo for you, dear readers, and have decided to show how I work when I am inking my own continuity. The process may break a few rules here and there, but I think it’s important to show that there is no one “right” way to draw. We all develop our processes after trying to conform to the accepted ways, and I find many fellow professionals have veered from the path with a work method that suits them best. In my case, I work in different ways from time to time, out of a need to shake things up. Sometimes I will feel the need to draw tight prelims at a small size, scale them up to final art size, and ink or pencil. If you are drawing a complicated perspective-laden sequence, drawing small scale can make far away perspective points easier to manage, where they might be two feet off your paper at full size. It can also help when trying to coordinate a lot of overlapping characters, or elements to lay them out at a tiny size. I recently completed a pencils-only comic project which was to be finished by the inker printing out and rendering on bluelines. I drew tight prelims, then enlarged and traced off super-clean pencils, to make the inker’s job easier. Had the actual art boards gone to the same inker, I would have penciled directly onto the paper, since construction lines are not as confusing in graphite as they might be in nonrepro blueline ink. For the examples shown here, a page from a recent Semiautomagic story written by Alex DeCampi, my method is this:

DRAW! SPRING 2017

STEP 1: I execute a tiny thumbnail drawing (see previous page and left) to show the basic configuration of panels and layout, which I then refer to as I scribble on the actual art boards, and proceed to ink. This method is more of a free form adventure, and feels comparable to a tightrope walker working without a safety net below. I can scribble a loose structure for the whole page, or work panel to panel, from the top of the page down, or the bottom of the page up. It is a fair criticism to say you could make some big mistakes working like this, but I like the danger! Looking at my thumbnail, I can change angles, and play with the camera distance from the subject, but I know what has to happen on each page and each panel, so the mistakes are usually minor. I am working from a full script, not a plot or outline, so I know I am dealing with six panels. The sketch is really a way for me to visualize the basic flow and composition without any extra detail. I try to imagine balloon placement at this stage, since it is very important to compose a panel which leaves enough space for lettering, and almost as important, to lock down who speaks first if there is a back and forth conversation between characters. You can compose the most brilliant panel of art, but if the letterer can’t place dialogue on it, it’s a big problem. Don’t lose track of the fact that this is all about storytelling, not just pretty pictures!

STEP 2: The level of penciling here is as finished as I need before starting to ink. I pulled the camera back a little, but the composition matches my thumbnail.

STEP 3: I inked the main figure and most of the background elements with a Hunt #102 crow quill dip pen and Pelikan drawing ink. I saved inking the spruce tree for my brush, a #4 Rafael series 8404 Kolinsky, again using Pelikan ink.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

JEFFREY WATTS THE WATTS ATELIER OF THE ARTS

Interview conducted by Mike Manley and transcribed by Sean Dulaney

JEFFREY WATTS: Hey, Mike! How are you doing? DRAW!: Good, good! How are you? JW: Hanging in there. Getting work done. Working on a new [George] Bridgman book—kind of a companion book to the Bridgman book that I’ve been working on forever to try to get out with our online program. It’s kind of to revamp the Bridgman book into cleaner [Frank] Reilly drawings, combined with Frazetta drawings, combined with photo reference of models in the poses of Bridgman, and all that kind of stuff. It’s one of those projects that is just swallowing me up on top of everything else. DRAW!: I can imagine. That’s a book that’s really hard to decipher, because it’s his class drawings. It was one of the books you could always find in the library. Everybody looked like a Jim Starlin drawing. JW: Yeah, yeah. My dad used to have it on the shelf, and I used to try to draw from it when I was in high school. It was great, but it needs a Bridgman Unabridged. It needs a book that tells you how to study from that thing, because it’s pretty hard. That’s one of the things I used to do in our classes. I redrew all of his drawings, but also doing them in various techniques. First I would do them in charcoal in our style—very clean. I’d

DRAW! SPRING 2017

clean up all his linework, take out all his scribbles, decipher which insertion lines were correct and which ones were necessary, and then I’d take Frazetta and look at poses that are very similar to the angles that are in the Bridgman book. Then I’d go to photos of muscle builders in similar poses. Between those three things, you will get a really good cross-reference of how to actually utilize that book. It worked really well in class, so I did it for an online program—it was about 40 hours total. DRAW!: Now that’s 40 hours of you breaking down the Bridgman drawings? JW: Yeah, me redrawing them. I took this model, Yoni, we have who is built almost identically to the guys in that book. He’s not steroided or anything, just a naturally big, bulky guy who looks just like those guys. I took him and shot him in all the poses, and then after I redrew the Bridgman drawings, we would draw from that reference and extrapolate what you were learning from Bridgman using an actual model, and then go to Frazetta and look how it was exaggerated to make it really fantastic. DRAW!: Right, right. The story is that Frazetta copied that book in a weekend, and then he knew anatomy. That’s one of his legends.

JW: I know. He was such a character. [laughter] A long time ago at Comic-Con, he came out. I met him at my booth, and we talked for about an hour. I was doing a painting of one of his characters because I was trying to practice at the booth. So we sat there and talked, and then I got his number. I called him and we talked again one time. And then I went out to meet with him and spent the whole day with him and Ellie. I spent, I don’t know, 15 hours with him right before he had that stroke, and I was just able to sit and talk to him about his life, his journey… everything. We were sitting out on his porch down in Boca Grande, Florida, and he had all these pieces just stacked around this little condo. I’d go in and grab one, come back out, and we’d sit and talk about it. It was one of the highlights of my career as an artist. Twenty years of doing Comic-Con was all worth it for just that one time where I got to make that connection. Once he had that stroke, he wasn’t that accessible to the public. DRAW!: Was that his second stroke, or the one that made him draw with his left hand? JW: I’m trying to think of the year, because it was a major stroke, and then I did see him two years later. He had moved back to be with his kids up in Pennsylvania. I went out with a bunch of our teachers and we did this road trip, and we saw him. By that time, Ellie was at the museum and he had an oxygen tank. He was dragging that thing around, but he came out. He couldn’t remember that much by that time, so it was kind of… I didn’t really want to see him after that first meeting I had with him, because I thought that was about as good as it was going to get. We sat and watched Night of the Hunter— DRAW!: Oh, that’s a great film. It’s the only film that Charles Laughton ever directed. JW: Yeah! He was like a little kid watching that. He was 80, 75, or something like that, and it was as if he were five years old. But he was the sweetest guy ever. And I was worried about coming out to see him because when you meet your heroes like that, maybe they’re going to disappoint you. You’ve heard all these rumors about him being kind of a jerk or this or that…. He was just the sweetest guy. And he would’ve given me a painting if Ellie hadn’t been there. He’s just the most giving guy. She was the one who policed him and made sure he wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t be doing. DRAW!: I was friends with Al Williamson, and they were good buddies. Al was the same way. He was still like a teenager in many ways. He had a movie projector, and we’d have movie nights and watch old movies. [laughter] I think the guys of that generation, movies are really important to them. JW: That’s what fed them. Frazetta and all those guys, they all thought like movie directors. I mean, all good comics guys do, but he had that staging ability like Hitchcock—the perfect timing, the perfect money shot, the perfect angle, the perfect distribution of weight. Everything was set up like that perfect key frame in a movie. I just loved his stuff. My dad was an illustra-

tor, and he’d be tearing up those Edgar Rice Burroughs books, recycling them and keeping the covers. We had this stack of Frazetta covers I’d sit and draw from when I was five. So growing up with those heroes, and getting to meet one and spend a day with him, it was freaky and weird, but what an opportunity. He was one of my favorites of all time. DRAW!: It’s weird now because there are students who are fans of fantasy art, which all comes out of him, and they have no idea who the guy is. JW: Isn’t that crazy? I mean, you look at his book and you have [George] Lucas hanging out, and [Sylvester] Stallone… DRAW!: I went to the IlluXCon and met Erik [Gist], your buddy and fellow teacher. I’d met him there a couple of times, but one of the things I really noticed last year when I was there, when you look at the guys who came pre-Star Wars, their artwork is much more individual than the stuff that’s coming out now. If you walked through the room, there were a lot of great artists there, but a lot of the stuff looks more similar than when Frazetta and [John] Berkey and those guys were doing it. You would never confuse a Berkey painting for a Vincent Di Fate painting. JW: I totally agree. I think now everything is more accessible and it’s so incestuous. Everyone’s kind of stealing from everyone, and you’ve got a lot of digital guys who are kind of manipulating that way. Individual development just doesn’t happen as much it doesn’t seem like. Or it’s changing. I don’t know. DRAW!: I’ve been following your school for several years. When I was thinking about going back to school, yours was one of the places I looked at. I basically didn’t want to relocate to California.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

JW: Well, we have a base program, right? And the base program is going to be about 750 hours. You have five phases of head drawing, five phases of figure drawing, two phases of fundamentals, two of anatomy, which will be the Bridgman. Then you have five phases of head painting, five of figure painting, five phases of landscape painting, and five phases of still life painting. Each of those are 15 hours long, and each one kind of builds on the next. You start with monochrome, and then you go to the Zorn Palette, and then you go to full color, and you work your way up the palette chain. So it’s three different palettes you master. DRAW!: Everybody struggles with perspective and the figure in perspective, or the figure in a composition. JW: That’s why we have specialty classes: Foreshortening, Perspective I, Perspective II, Composition…. My dad has four Composition classes that deal with freehand perspective, Erik does fundamental perspective, 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-point perspective. We’ve got all that. We’ve got Color Theory, we’ve got Drapery—all of those are specialty classes. You have a curriculum for your core base, almost like your Bachelor’s program, and that’s 750 hours. That’s getting your core skill sets. And then on top of that, you have another 750 hours of specialty classes. Those are the ones you’re talking about. “How to put a figure into a composition.” “How to do a commission portrait painting.” “How to do complicated still life finishes.” “How to do narrative paintings.” “How to shoot photo shoots and splice them together into large western paintings.” “How to do card

DRAW! SPRING 2017

covers.” “How to do single image comics covers.” “How to do sequential storytelling.” We have over a hundred classes, and the base classes are the repetitious, quick sketch, 20-minute layins, features and facial expressions, head drawing extractions…. We walk you through this curriculum I designed over the last 25 years in our regular school, and now we’re putting it all online and buffing it out, polishing it off, and making it even more user friendly. Making it even better than it’s been at the school, because it has to be because people are learning from distance. There’s a robust workbook that goes along with all of it, tons of reference. Basically we’re locking people in and spoon-feeding them. In a class at school, in order to retain the information, you’d have to see 50 demos. Now, you’d see the variety of 50 demos, but your visual memory would only retain— DRAW!: I didn’t go back to school until I was 45, so as an adult, I took my digital camera to class. When the teachers did demos, I would tape them. None of the other, younger students ever seemed to think about doing anything like that for the most part. By that point, my brain was the brain of a professional, so I’m looking at things in a different way, but… JW: Well, at our school we don’t really allow video because we’ve got nude models and you’ve got legality issues. You just do not want people taping you when you are talking off the cuff and you’re cussin’ and saying things you shouldn’t be saying. [Mike laughs] You can take still pictures…. DRAW!: [yelling] “Jeffrey Watts said what?!”

JW: Yeah, and you never know what my dad will come up with. [laughter] In a classroom environment, you get the intimacy. You get the camaraderie. It has all these benefits, but you learn very slowly because you can only retain a certain percentage of what you see. And you’re usually watching it from some oblique angle that’s really odd, because there are 15 people huddled around one guy drawing.

process of doing a drawing. And everyone is in one group, so there’s no separation. Another thing that’s so beneficial about the atelier is that you have beginners next to total professionals. Everybody’s in the same group. Everybody can learn at as fast a pace as they can pick up the information. You don’t have the blind leading the blind, with all the beginners with the beginners and no one knows anything. You have me sitting next to Erik teaching. Or me taking the class.

DRAW!: At the Academy, my teacher Scott would set up the model, and then everyone would draw, and he would draw with you so you would see how he was working. Do you draw with the students? JW: Sure. Every class, we do a demonstration for 25 minutes that’s phenomenal. They’re almost finished drawings because we’ve been doing it for so long. If it’s a head drawing class, we warm up with four five-minute sketches, and then the teacher sits down and executes a 25-minute demo. That’s every class! This is how Fred taught. Then we sit down, and everyone kind of comes around. Sometimes we have dual teaching. If we have a new teacher co-teaching with me, we both talk to each other. I’ll say something and he’ll listen, and when I’ll stop for a moment of rest, he’ll take over, building off of my conversation or starting another tangent on something that’s important. But we’ll do a 25-minute presentation, and that’s where everybody just watches you do your thing. You put your credibility on the line, and then after that, everyone starts their

DRAW!: You also learn by teaching. JW: Oh yeah! A ton! Because the key is intuitive knowledge, and that’s the only reason I’m able to gab so much and be able to have something even remotely decent online or on YouTube. You have people asking abstract questions, while you’re trying to paint a gouache head. They’re asking some out-of-left-field question, and you’ve got to turn your brain onto its other hemisphere in order to answer while you’re painting a beautiful painting right in front of them. There are very few people who can do that. I had Calvin Liang, who is a great plein air painter, but he was watching me teach and he was like, “Ah, you must have two brains! How do you do that?” It’s just so hard, and I’m a right/left brainer luckily, like my dad is too. I can work fairly well from both hemispheres

(above) An instructional drapery study by Watts Atelier teacher, Erik Gist. (right) A long pose figure drawing by Jeff. Drapery study © Erik Gist. Figure drawing © Jeffrey R. Watts.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

derful stuff in there. I just have to give you kudos and let you know how wonderful it is that you’ve done that.

(above) Watts Atelier students at work painting from a live model. (right) Jeff inspects his tools. Photos © The Jeffrey Watts Atelier of the Arts

JW: We’re actually in the middle of our Summer semester. It’s a five-week term. A lot of people travel during the summer, so we trimmed it down to five weeks. The Fall, Winter, and Spring terms are all ten weeks long, so we do three ten-week terms with about four weeks off in between. And then in the summer we have a five-weeker. DRAW!: And so you’ll end it this month? JW: We’ll go through this month, and then we’ll have a little bit of a break, and then we start up the Fall term in late October. It runs through December 18 or December 20. I love it. I know I’m always hemming and hawing about this and that, but I don’t know what I’d do without it. I really enjoy it. It’s been an honor to teach. And I’ve always loved your magazine, by the way. I just think it’s fantastic. DRAW!: I appreciate it. It’s my version of what you’re doing. JW: Exactly. And it just has so much good stuff in there. Sometimes I’ll just grab them and take them into class. If I go into a sketchbook class, I’ll grab a bunch of them. I’ll go in and start digging through them and use it as an excuse to read the old articles and draw some of the stuff in there. It’s won-

DRAW! SPRING 2017

DRAW!: Well, I appreciate that. I always say that the magazine is for the 17-year-old version of me. JW: And how cool is that? That’s a lot of work. I know from trying to put together anything that I’ve done, it’s such hard work. Birthing the online school really did a number on me. I’ve never been burnt out like that. And I don’t burn out usually, but it was brutal. But it was a really necessary thing for me to reassess where I’m going with my art. I really want to be authentic with what I do and really felt like I had not been. I’ve been a good technician but I had not really found the sweet spot that’s really, honestly me, and I need to do that. DRAW!: And you might just have to make a lot of bad art to find it. JW: I know. I pulled out of all my galleries, and I was in some great ones, but I pulled out of them to work on the online program, because I felt like that’s where I can leave a really good impression behind and something really meaningful. My art will be my art, and I may just paint it for myself, who knows? I may not show in galleries again. I don’t know. But regardless, it would be nice to be in a position to not have to. And then I could just see what the five-year-old me wants to do, the real me. But I’ve got to get back to the real me first, and that’s going to take some digging around, and it’s going to be kind of uncomfortable. I’m just at a point in my life where I’m reassessing a lot of stuff. DRAW!: Well, you’re mid-career if you think about it. JW: Pretty normal, I think. So thanks again. DRAW!: I’m glad you agreed to do it. I’ve been a big fan of your stuff and the school for years. JW: Likewise.

POWER of PAPER

the

onsequences. While teaching a recent class and helping a student struggle on an ambitious piece, I brought up consequences in regards to the creative process of executing the drawing they were engaged in, or any piece of art for that matter. The student was worried about the consequences of trying a certain technique which they had not tried before. But I told them it was fine to “mess it up,” and you have to risk that on any work. It’s a crucial step in an artist’s growth to be sure, to accept the fact that it might go great or it might go poorly; either way you will learn a lot. Learning from the ruined or bad piece of art sounds completely wrong to a young artist, but an older artist realizes how true that fact is. That class led me to thinking about how this idea of consequences is such a vital part of making any artwork. All art is a result of many choices, the final piece is the result many decisions by the artist along the way, sometimes thousands of them, building up like sediment. The Italians even have a word for it, pentimento. It’s a term that describes a drawing or painting which shows the traces of previous work by the artist, showing where they have made changes on the work as they progressed. We can sometimes learn as much or even more from our mistakes. I know I have. Mistakes and failure are as much a part of learning to draw or paint as falling and skinned knees are to learning to walk and eventually run. All young artists want to run with their heroes. Sometimes the false legs of the digital media can stunt or trip the young artist though. The computer is becoming more and more dominant today as a tool, and a lot of great work is produced with it as a medium, just like oil or watercolor, etc. But I do see a downside in the digital ways of working for the younger develop-

Harley Quinn

by Mike Manley and Bret Blevins

ing artist. I feel it can have a weakening process on the core skills a young artist is forging for the battles ahead. I have seen how this can result in often a bad or weak drawing. In this “Bootcamp” I want to concentrate on what I have often witnessed as a teacher and have often talked about with my fellow professionals (and many times with Bret over the phone). The digital wave has fully washed over the entire world, especially in the commercial fields. Every month it seems some new digital program or tablet, etc., is rolling out. This is not an anti-digital rant, but I feel the commercial world and schools often push the tech onto young artists before their foundations are solidly set. Drawing is thinking, and the tech can get in the way. You can’t deny the fact we all need to use and master the various programs and digital tools to stay afloat in the choppy waters of commercial art. As an example, when I started storyboarding in the late ’90s, it was an all-paper process. The last show I actively boarded on was Secret Saturdays, and that was all done on paper. Now if I did storyboards I’d need to use Storyboard Pro and a Cintiq. I have stood as a teacher and witnessed the consequences, the weakening effect of digital platforms in the development of a young artist’s drawing skills. There is a seductive aspect

DRAW! SPRING 2017

Judge Parker daily: Because of the nature of this strips, I did this all-digital. This helped with the diner interior. I drew that separately and the figures in each panel on different layers. I found an okay picture of an old diner and another of some state policemen, and pasted them together. This gave me scale for the other figures, and for the waitress in the second panel, which I also drew on a separate layer. Judge Parker © North America Syndicate, Inc.

DRAW! SPRING 2017

The painting on the left is a very quick digital painting I did on my laptop the first night of last year’s Baltimore Comic-Con from my hotel window on the 11th floor. The sun was starting to set when I got back to my room, so I had maybe 30–45 minutes on this as the light was going fast. I was relying so much on my traditional painting skills and muscle memory as I used Photoshop and my Wacom, because I was looking at the view and often not at the tablet as I painted. Getting the size of the brush right, the opacity of the digital paint, and the scale of which I was zoomed in on the picture was a challenge. The painting on the right of the 53rd Street Pier on the Delaware in South Philly was painted a few weeks before in plein air when my group, The Philadelphia Plein Air Painters, was invited to paint the historic pier and habitat. This was done in about three hours or so in oil, and this experience I carried with me to the digital realm in the left-hand painting.

Another important fact is that becoming too dependent on software before having a really strong traditional skill set can lead to a real problem: you might get really good at a program that they suddenly discontinue! Software comes and goes, and often you are left struggling to find a way of reproducing the effect you want in another program. I started out working essentially like my comic-artist heroes did back in the 1930s and the ’40s. Comic book production didn’t change very much until the ’90s when computers came into the process. I worked just like Jack Kirby and Al Williamson, with paper, pencils, brushes, and pens, and that was about it—no scanners, Photoshop blue lines, or internet. I have adapted along with the demands of the job. In my own work process, I seek to enter a flow, a near trance-like state, where I flow along unfettered by anything other than my instincts, my guts. It’s hard to get into that flow when you’re fighting with a new program to make the marks you want. Drawing is a mysterious and sometimes magical process, yet it’s also a practical one. It has to be dependable yet nuanced and inventive, a vehicle for any job. Drawing must always be in service to the task at hand. When an artist draws, they are (consciously or unconsciously) analyzing, breaking things down, and understanding the subject, and that information is being recorded and committed to memory. Comics is a job that requires drawing from stored information, the more you draw something, like the human figure, the better you understand it. Anything that interrupts that process—any program that the artist becomes too dependent on—risks holes in the foundation. I believe the best path in practice is having the strongest traditional skill set in foundation that then can be employed and adapted across any of the constantly, rapidly changing platforms the artist will need to utilize.

These storyboards are from New Frontier, one of the last jobs I did that was drawn on paper. If I went back now I’d have to get Storyboard Pro and wave bye-bye to the paper and pencils. DC: The New Frontier © DC Comics and Warner Bros. Animation

DRAW! SPRING 2017